Web Failure

Some guy came out with a service on the web. You are supposed to be able to compose letters on his web site. Then he will actually print out the letter and mail it for you via postal mail for a flat fee of 99 cents.

Now this is not an entirely new idea. I’ve seen the same service being rolled out this past year. The nice part about this latest version is that you get to mail your first letter for free. That at least got me interested to give it a try.

The web page had 4 tabs on it. They were “How It Works”, “Features”, “Types of Letters” and “FAQ”. I tried clicking on Features. Nothing happened. It still displayed the information from the How It Works tab. What the heck?

I guess this guy’s stuff is either broken or does not work with my browser. Come on. I am using Internet Explorer. And with that the guy lost my business. If he can’t get the web page to work, what makes him think I will trust him to deliver a letter for me? Ouch.

Desktop Support

I work for a big consulting company. We are supposed to report all problems to our Help Desk. The last time I rebooted my laptop, I got a message stating the Windows Service Pack 2 was not installed. It is now required at our company. So I called up the Help Desk. A local desktop support guy came and ran some command on my machine. He told me to reboot the machine in 5 minutes and I would be set.

After rebooting I got the same error message. So I called the local guy back. He did not return my call. I had to call the Help Desk again. The same guy came back and tried some more things. It looks like he needed to manually install an upgrade. He got impatient and told me the last download he did would take 15 or 20 minutes. So he left. That was the last I saw of him.

Come on. Stay here and complete your task. This last visit got crazy. The guy was complaining that my machine was slow. He had some precious ideas on how to fix that. He recommended I defragment my hard drive or clean up some temp files. I would have preferred that he just actually fix the problem he got called in to do already. It has gotten to the point where I am doing the upgrade on the machine myself. It is hard to get good help these days.

Fulfill Orders Quickly

There is a mail order company that I have been using to buy my clothes. They are sending me more and more mailings. I find stuff I like in just about every mailing. However they are not getting extra business from me. Why? They can't fill my orders fast enough.

I generally don't want to place a new order with a company until I have received my previous order. Normally companies like Amazon rush my orders out immediately. They get repeat business very quickly.

However my favorite clothing mail order company takes its time. They often back order my clothes. That is fine with me. But they are losing out on sales. I got a stack full of offers from them. But I am not going to act on any of them until I get my goods.

Let this be a lesson to all you mail order companies. Ship me my stuff fast. You will be rewarded.

Krispy Kreme Delight

Previously I had written about the weak guarantee provided by Hostess for their doughnuts. As a result, I refuse to buy any Hostess products. The company is just too sleazy for my taste. I still want to eat some doughnuts. This time I tried Krispy Kreme.

Krisy Kreme cost about the same as Hostess. However their box did not have any bogus quality guarantees on it. I ate up most of the doughnuts. They were not as fresh and good as Hostess. However there was not marketing mumbo jumobo involved. Out of principle, I am going to stick with Krispy Kreme. These guys even get a doughnut link from met. Good job guys.